Speaking in London today, Dr Zryan Yones, a medical Doctor, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and former Minister of Health in Kurdistan, expressed his concern that nearly a million refugees in Kurdistan (Source: United Nations), have been suffering from hot temperatures of 50 degrees with no electricity or basic facilities such as running water. The refugees will soon also suffer the extreme effects of wet weather and freezing temperatures as they camp out in the open streets or in simple tents. In a country of 4.2 million people nearly a million are refugees which gives some scale of the enormous humanitarian crisis unfolding.

Dr Yones recently returned from Kurdistan where he tended to the medical needs of the refugees and he said that the situation with refugees was ‘overwhelming’. Their needs are for the fundamentals, of safety and security and the Kurdish government and Kurdish people have done this but assistance is now needed for medicine, food, clothing and protection against the harsh winter. ‘These refugees are not nomads; they have come from established homes and find themselves at the mercy of the elements having had to flee from ISIL’. He added: ‘Thankfully they came to a safe haven in Kurdistan but the imminent winter will cause even more tragedies unless help is given immediately.’

He explained: ‘In order to understand the situation with these refugees, one has to realise that from one day to the next they were displaced. These were settled families with jobs, farms, companies and normal lives and in a day or so they found themselves travelling on foot across inhospitable terrain to reach the safer areas in Kurdistan’. He concluded: ‘We want these refugees to know that the world is watching out for them and others affected so tragically by recent events; we want them to know that they are not alone’.

Lined with barbed wire, guarded by soldiers wearing riot gear and with tanks waiting nearby, this is perhaps not the welcome Kurdish refugees were hoping for as they fled across the Turkish border from Syria.

The German government will call for increased European Union aid to the Kurdistan Region, which is struggling to pay to shelter the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled there from the rest of Iraq, a German minister said on Thursday.